Weatherby’s Avacta sees £250k worth of orders of the Affimer product in first 6 months

Wetherby-based Avacta Group, a global provider of innovative technologies, consumables and reagents for Life Science markets, see major growth for the Affimer® product.

While announcing its interim results for the period ended 31 January 2015, the company revealed that significant progress towards operational targets for the financial year for Affimers’ development and production capacity has been made.

Affimers, which are engineered proteins that mimic the specificity and binding affinities of antibodies, have already been ordered from large pharma, biotech and academic customers.

Furthermore, since being launched in September 2014, the Affimer catalogue has doubled to 90 products, meaning that there has been a constant growth in sales.

Avacta also made progress in the export market as Avacta Health’s canine lymphoma blood test (‘cLBT’) is now available for purchase in the US.

At the time of the publication of the company’s half yearly report, the total order intake for custom Affirmers stands at £250k.

However, the company did see a £90k decrease in Animal Health total revenue since last year, which is now £730k. But Avacta’s Animal Health new test revenue increased to £30k million (2014: £20k).

Alastair Smith, Chief Executive Officer, said: “I am delighted with the progress made by the Affimers business in the last six months. We are seeing commercial traction build for custom Affimer research reagents with orders from large pharma, smaller biotech and academia as well as good growth in the pipeline of sales enquiries to support future sales. The catalogue is growing ahead of the rate we forecast and, whilst I reiterate that I expect custom Affimer sales will perform in advance of catalogue sales for the next couple of years, the catalogue represents an attractive, high margin, recurring revenue opportunity in the longer term.

“We have seen very strong interest in Affimers as a therapeutic platform technology even at this very early stage with strategic partnerships established with several small biotechs. This is helpful in validating Affimers in a way that I believe will catalyse further, larger deals.

“Avacta Animal Health launched cLBT in the US market and expects to follow with further offerings in both the UK and US markets in coming months as we seek to add innovative new diagnostics alongside the existing allergy products.

“The recent disposal of the analytical business activity to a US acquirer reflects the strategy we have pursued for the past couple of years to focus resources on Affimers and the Board continues to believe that this strategy will deliver the greatest value to shareholders. It is a very exciting time for Avacta and I look forward to the next opportunity to update the market.”